The church was in an old warehouse. On one side was a makeshift sanctuary with a wooden stage. On the other side was an empty garage that was either extremely hot or extremely cold, depending on the season. I collected a few white folding chairs and created a circle. I found a small whiteboard in the closet and propped it against the wall. I stood back and beheld it with pride. I had created my first classroom—although truthfully it looked more like an AA meeting.
The kids scoffed and hissed their distaste for our new setting. They sat contemptuously with their arms folded. Shontae smacked her gum and slouched in her seat. Cordell leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his chin cupped between his hands. TJ was looking at the ceiling and twisting his locks. Ben and Angel were preoccupied with their phones. Everyone looked miserable, like Sunday school or the world’s most boring history class was about to get under way.
In contrast, I was happy to be there and itching to get started. “There’s something that I want to talk to you about,” I said, reaching for the whiteboard. “Have y’all ever heard of the Harlem Renaissance?”
There was silence and blank stares.
“Okay, great,” I said. “Let me tell you all about it.” I unleashed the most passionate lesson that I knew. I told stories about Reconstruction and the Harlem Renaissance and how we are part of a rich tradition of Black ingenuity. I couldn’t even stay in my seat. I bounded from one side of the circle to the other, like the ring of folding chairs was a grand stage. I had just reached one of my favorite parts of the story when, all of a sudden, Cordell yawned. This was no discreet yawn. This was a full-body, arms-stretched, legs-trembling, wide-mouthed yawn. I stopped talking. I thought, Did this lil nigga just do a full-body yawn? I was damn near performing backflips off the walls, teaching my ass off, and he had the nerve to yawn like he was just waking up for morning coffee. The disrespect. But I wasn’t going to allow him to spoil it for the rest of the group, so I stormed ahead.
The story was picking up and my momentum soared. I became so excited that I impersonated my various heroes. I jumped onto a chair like Denzel Washington in The Great Debaters. When I reached the climax of my story, I looked around the circle to gauge their excitement—and two of them were nodding off. I thought, You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me. I was enacting history like I was auditioning for the Broadway cast of Hamilton, and my performance was putting them to sleep.
I was crushed. Like school, like English, like debate, teaching was the complete opposite of what I had imagined. I thought, Maybe the Praxis exam was right about me. Maybe I’m not qualified to do this. Maybe I misheard my calling.
I did not understand. I expected my first classroom to crackle with electricity and Aha! moments. The students would smile from ear to ear as I introduced them to scholars who looked like them. I would command the room like Mr. Tolson in The Great Debaters. They would chant and cheer me on like the people who’d heard my first public speech a few months earlier. But none of that happened.
After the students went home, I was so confused. I thought I had the answer, the remedy for disengaged youth. Discovering the Harlem Renaissance and Black scholars changed my life, so why wasn’t this working for them? There must be something that I was not doing right. How could they not care about something so valuable?
My thoughts turned to philosophy and rhetoric. I thought about Aristotle’s modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. I remembered reading that humans are more emotional than logical: not everyone thinks critically, but everyone feels intensely. For teachers and speakers and leaders, this means that we mobilize people by understanding that the heart is the gateway to the mind. That’s why Maya Angelou said that you might not remember what people say or do, but you will never forget how they made you feel.
I had grabbed teaching by the wrong end, instinctively approaching it like the teachers who had made students numb to learning. I put the subject before the student. Instead of only asking myself, What do I want them to know? I started asking myself, What do I want them to feel?
Armed with this insight, I was ready to have another go. I begged the parents to give me another Saturday with their kids and they happily obliged. The kids were even more sullen the second time around.
This time, I introduced debate. I wanted them to feel empowered, included, and alive. Nothing does this better than using your voice. People become passionate about things that are personal. The most personal thing you can ever own is your perspective and your voice. Your opinions belong to no one else but you. If I could find something that they cared about, marry that with what I wanted them to care about, and activate their voices—passion would fill the room.
I tried everything during our second Saturday at the church. Nothing worked.
There were no yawns or chin drops, but there was no passion either. I wanted them to love this stuff and be just as jacked about it as I was. But they didn’t perk up until I said, “All right, let’s take a break” and they huddled around their phones to watch YouTube videos. My efforts to make learning as thrilling as sports and music videos were failing, so I gave up. I abandoned my lesson plan and said, “We’re done for the day. Let’s just go across the street and grab something to eat at Hardee’s.”
Nothing excited them more than the twenty-foot field trip across the street. As I watched them strangle and devour cheeseburgers, I listened. I stopped talking and tuned my ear toward the things that mattered most to them. As the girls fawned over their crushes, the boys mocked them. They began arguing about who was in love and who was not, and when banter escalated to insults, I swooped in.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Hold on a second. Let’s talk about this, but one at a time.” I asked the boys, “Why is it that you think it’s not possible for Shontae to love this guy?”
I had my own opinion, having listened to the conversations. But my perspective did not matter. I only guided with questions and moved out of the way as they explored.
Cordell stood so quickly that his seat nearly flew back as he exclaimed, “She just met the guy!”
“So what!” Shontae countered, rising to meet him at eye level.
“Calm down,” I interrupted before verbal punches were thrown.
They both sat down. I told them that we could continue the conversation, but we would have a few ground rules.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I said. “Cordell, you give Shontae a minute to make her point. Shontae, you give Cordell a minute to make his point. The only rule is that you cannot interrupt each other.” They laid out their cases.
After each of them presented their arguments, I said, “Now, I want you to cross-examine each other.” Shontae’s face contorted at the jargon. “Huh?” she said.
“Basically, each of you takes a turn interrogating the other.”
“Ooh, I go first!” Shontae declared.
I laughed and said, “Okay, Shontae. Just remember, the rule is you can only pose questions.” Then I added, “And you have to actually let him answer.”
Shontae opened fire on Cordell with a mouthful of polemical questions. But Cordell stood firm, responding cleverly and with conviction, not allowing his opponent to break him. Before I knew it, they were delving deeper and deeper into the topic with each question. Their understanding began to crystallize. Their voices rose with ferocity. Their bodies could no longer be confined to their seats. It became so intense that Ben and Ryan and Angel charged in from the sidelines. The boys and the girls clashed with each other like it was the third round of a grand cross-examination. The other patrons grimaced and frowned, but I did not care. The kids were consumed by a new flame as I sat back and beheld the magic unfolding before my eyes. It was beautiful. They were debating. I was teaching. They were learning. It was the passion I had been longing for. We were having our first real class—at Hardee’s.
The points on both sides were not entirely logical, but this was okay. We were off to a beautiful start.
“All right,” I said
, “your thoughts and feelings are all valid. Now let’s break it down conceptually.”
We dealt with the nature of love: what it is, how it comes to be, and when it can occur. Instead of lecturing, I became a facilitator, posing questions and allowing their curiosity to steer us. I asked questions like “Is love at first sight possible?” and “What is the true definition of love?” to keep the conversation on course. I sat back and watched their inquisitive natures take over.
The conversation reached a point where I could easily introduce an academic concept. I was nervous because I did not want to suck the energy out of the room with lofty language, but I could not miss this teachable moment. I took a deep breath and went for it.
“Love is complicated,” I said. “In fact, it’s so complex that the Greeks broke it down into four separate words: eros, phileo, storge, and agape.”
I examined their faces to see if they were still with me. They looked as if I had forced them to bite into a lemon. I knew I needed to act quickly to avoid losing them. Instead of reverting to lecture mode, I brought them back into the conversation with more questions.
“Okay, think of it this way. What are the different ways that you can love a person?”
“You can love a boy,” Shontae said as she scowled in Cordell’s direction.
“Correct,” I said. “What else?”
Ben replied, “You can love a sibling.”
“Yes,” I said. “Keep going.”
They continued with more examples of loving a friend, loving a parent, loving a spouse, and I asked them to break down the distinctions. I realized that this was the key to engagement. I gave them a problem to solve. When kids solve problems, learning becomes experiential; it ceases being one-dimensional and unfolds into a matrix of discovery. For this to happen, a teacher must facilitate an experience, not just transmit information. So many teachers say, Here’s the content, take this test—and that’s it. But Einstein once described education as what remains when schooling is over. Teachers succeed when they incite curiosity and give students an opportunity to create something of their own. Whether students make something tangible in science or something abstract in humanities, it belongs to them. It’s theirs to look upon with pride. That is how students come to own their education.
I watched their faces glisten as they collaborated to solve the mystery of love. I stayed out of the way, mesmerized by what was happening. They were immersed in a scholarly exercise and didn’t even know it. Because it did not feel like school. I wondered how much deeper they would allow me to take the conversation.
“Want to know something cool?” I gently inserted. “This conversation right here puts you in the ranks of Greek philosophers.”
“Philo-what?” Shontae said sarcastically. Her face scrunched like I had just spoken pig Latin. I could not help but laugh.
“A philosopher,” I said. “They question ideas about the world to find problems and solve them. Like what you’re doing.”
“Well, I ain’t no philosopher,” she responded, “I’m Shontae.”
“Or,” I said, “you can be Shontae the philosopher.” She sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes as we shared a laugh.
“You know what?” Shontae continued. “Now that I think about it, you might be right.”
I looked up and smiled, thinking she had finally joined the party that I was throwing.
“I’m the philosopher,” she said, “and they the dummies!” She pointed her acrylic fingernails at the boys. They quickly snapped back until I said, “Relax, relax. All of you are philosophers.” They did not appear to be turned off by the idea. So I continued.
“Let me explain who they are and how it relates to what you just accomplished.”
Later that evening, I sat on my sagging couch and reflected on the miracle at Hardee’s. Aristotle was right. I did not have their attention until I had their hearts. Once they latched on to something of personal value, I was able to pull them into a deeper conversation. Carter G. Woodson said that the mere imparting of information is not education; the goal is being able to think and do for oneself. I needed to get better at teaching them how to analyze and think for themselves. Learning is not an interstate highway across a flat plain, it’s a meandering journey full of twists and turns and glorious tangents, where curiosity carries the student and teacher to places they’ve never been. I had never experienced anything else so euphoric as our afternoon at Hardee’s.
The bliss of the moment was pierced by a surprise phone call from Tasha, Shontae’s mother.
“Hello?” I answered with a touch of wariness.
“Brandon…” she began, sounding confrontational. Tasha is from the hood, so her voice has an unabashed trace of ghetto.
“What you do to my child?” she asked. I thought, Oh shit. I knew the boys were aggressive during our spontaneous debate, but I did not think anything got out of hand. Maybe I should not have allowed their exchange to be so passionate, but I honestly thought we were doing a good thing. I started explaining but Tasha cut me off.
“She over here talkin’ ’bout some man named Plato and his Greek friends and asking me questions like how did I know I loved my ex.”
I couldn’t hold back the laughter. I was relieved and tickled.
“I ain’t never heard this child talk like this!” Tasha said with unusual excitement.
Several Saturdays went by. We met for class in the former garage and continued the discussions that began at Hardee’s. But one day I arrived to find that the students had beaten me to our makeshift classroom. I grabbed my whiteboard from the closet and bounced in, ready to say, “Okay, let’s begin,” but when I looked up, there were about ten kids, not just five. Before I could ask, “Who the hell are y’all?” Ben and Cordell said the newcomers were their friends, some of them from the neighborhood basketball court. Their pants were sagging nearly to their knees and they greeted me with dap and street slang. I loved it. I said, “Welcome home,” and we launched into our journey.
The following Saturday, there were nearly fifteen.
Weeks later, there were more than twenty. We upgraded from a circle in the garage to a row of white plastic tables and chairs in the more spacious lobby.
By the next month, about twenty-five inner-city youth were voluntarily showing up for Saturday school. It was a spectacle, a movement. We were experiencing our own renaissance.
At first, they hated it when I called them scholars. I greeted them with “Good morning, scholars” and dismissed class with “See you later, scholars,” and they scoffed at the very idea. Shontae, with her unbridled honesty, declared, “I ain’t no scholar.” I understood; only a few years earlier, I would have said the same thing. “Scholars are lame,” Shontae continued. “And I ain’t no geek.”
Young people love the idea of disrupting the status quo, and the educational system that they had grown to hate was a worthy target. I called them scholars because that’s what I saw when I looked into their eyes. I didn’t see what their teachers and their principals saw. I wasn’t afraid of their attitudes, their street clothes, their explicit language, or their other affectations, because I looked deeper. The uncouth behaviors that others saw—I saw those, too. But I recognized their underlying pain and believed it could be channeled in a different direction.
As the weeks passed, I watched an anger rise within them. The anger of being woke. The anger of discovering the truth. They asked questions that began, “So you mean to tell me…?” and “Wait, but how come…?” They learned what I learned: that we had all been miseducated. Day after day, we wrestled with the hard questions. We cried. We laughed. We did the gritty work of undoing their miseducation. I taught them how to remove the noose from their necks. I taught them about their responsibility to do the same for somebody else.
At this stage, there was only one thing missing. They were starting to talk like scholars. Now I wanted them to feel like scholars, which meant they had to look the part. I knew that style was one of their concerns
as popular teens. I realized that meeting them where they were meant marrying my agenda with their interests. So I wanted to redefine the image of a “scholar” into something with swag. After weeks of car washes and bake sales and borrowing money from my girlfriend, I saved up enough funds for a special surprise that I wanted to give them.
One Saturday they arrived to find a box sitting at the foot of each desk.
“You got us gifts?” Shontae said, lunging at a box with her name on it.
“Wait, don’t touch it,” I said. “Just take your seats. I need to explain something first.”
I did that annoying thing that my mother used to do on Christmas, where she gave a speech before each gift she presented. Waiting was pure torture and I’d ravage the box the second she was finished. They looked at me with the same impatience as I went around the room to give each student a personal affirmation about what made me most proud of them. They smiled with appreciation, but I could see that they were antsy, so I made it quick.
I opened a bigger box that had been sitting in front of me. I pulled out a batch of fancy plaid ties and held them up, saying, “These are for the girls.” Then I showed off custom-made, hand-sewn, polka-dot bow ties for the boys. Finally, I pulled out a crisp navy blazer with a custom embroidered emblem that read SCHOLARS PROGRAM. The girls gasped and shrieked with excitement and the boys yelled, “Yoooo!” as they ripped into their individual boxes like it was Christmas morning. The girls threw on the blazers and the boys wrapped the ties around their necks.
“Wait, what does this mean?” Shontae said, examining the emblem on her chest.
“We’re legit now,” I explained. “These are your outfits for class. Just like athletes have uniforms, so do debaters.” I explained that they were scholars now, that we were starting a new renaissance, and that we were giving scholarship a new look.
“I feel smart already,” Cordell said, stretching out his arms and stroking the new blazer like a royal robe.
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